Star Wars: Tales from Mos Eisley Cantina by Kevin J. Anderson Page B

it’s going to be,” Cai said, heading back toward the hatchway. “I tried to position it to keep a passage clear to both ships, and we can put the hatchway deflector shields up just to make sure. I’ll be right back.”
    The full force of the sandstorm hit about ten minutes after Cai and the droid returned; and it took less than ten minutes more for Shada to wonder if this whole idea might not have been a big mistake. Even through the thick hull they could hear the drumming of the sand against the ship, a drumming that was growing louder with each passing minute. The plan had been to hide the Strike Cruiser from probing Imperial eyes; it would be a rather costly victory if they all wound up entombed inside it.
    Cai was apparently thinking along the same lines. “That’s all the bolts down there,” she said, climbing out from under the Hammertong and handing her hydrospanner to Karoly. “I’m going to go check on the storm. Make sure we’re not getting buried too deep.”
    “Good idea,” Shada said, returning her attention to her own line of bolts. She finished them, waited as Karoly finished hers, and then together they eased the massive access panel off.
    The Hammertong’s inner workings weren’t nearly as complex as the number of pipe and power connections poking through the surface would have suggested. Most of the power and control cables seemed to run to a series of multihelix prismatic crystals and a group of unlabeled but identical black boxes; the piping seemed mostly connected to coolant lines and sleeves. “Maybe it’s some new kind of power core,” Shada suggested. “It’s a modular design—see how the pattern of connectors repeats every five meters down the side? We ought to be able to take it apart at those spots.”
    “Maybe,” Karoly said, prodding thoughtfully at one of the black boxes with the end of her hydrospanner. “Deefour, see if you can find a place to tie in. Might as well start pulling a technical readout—we’re going to want everything we can get on this thing.”
    “Hey!” Cai called from the cockpit area. “Shada, Karoly—you’d better come see this.”
    She was hunched over the main display, fiddling with the fine-tuning, when the other two reached her. “What is it?” Shada demanded.
    “I’m not sure,” Cai said. “Hard to tell through all the sand, but I think there’s a battle going on up there. An Imperial Star Destroyer against something about the size of a bulk freighter.”
    Shada leaned over the display, heart pounding. If Sileen had been unexpectedly fast at bringing in transport for them … “Can you scrub the image any more?” she asked.
    “I’m at the limit already,” Cai said. “It’s the sandstorm—wait a minute, there’s a break. It’s a Corellian Corvette.”
    Shada let out a quiet sigh. Not one of the Mistryl’s ships, then. “I wonder what’s going on.”
    “I don’t know,” Cai said slowly. “Wait a minute. Two more Star Destroyers coming in from hyperspace.”
    “That’s a lot of firepower for a planet like Tatooine,” Karoly said. “They only had one Star Destroyer guarding the Hammertong.”
    “Unless one or more of these were supposed to have been there, too,” Shada suggested. “Could be they got pulled away to help chase that Corellian.”
    “Either way, the Corellian must be pretty important to them,” Cai said. “We could be in the middle of something really big here.”
    Shada looked back at the Hammertong and the diminutive droid working alongside it. Cai was right … and suddenly she was feeling very short on time. “Cai, do you think we could get one of those modules off the Hammertong”
    “We could try. Probably take a couple of days with just the three of us and Deefour. Why?”
    “I don’t think we’re going to be able to wait for Sileen to bring back a ship,” Shada said. “If she hasn’t made it in by the time we get one of those modules off, we’d better take what we’ve got and